Q: What did we learn this week?
A: There is a time and a place for unethical, if not, illegal behaviour.
 
It’s been a week since Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion released his report in Ottawa making it abundantly clear that the Prime Minister broke the law.

Commissioner Dion determined “Mr. Trudeau used his position of authority over Ms. Wilson-Raybould (former Attorney General) to seek to influence, both directly and indirectly, her decision on whether she should overrule the Director of Public Prosecutions’ decision not to invite SNC-Lavalin to enter into negotiations towards a remediation agreement. Therefore, I find that Mr. Trudeau contravened section 9 of the (Conflict of Interest) Act.”
 
Justin Trudeau accepted the report but disagreed with the findings. That’s like the guy in the prisoner’s box telling the jury “I hear ya but I can’t accept your verdict.”
 
A week later, the pollsters are telling us Canadians aren’t moved by this latest development in the SNC scandal. Our reaction is apparently “baked in” to the latest survey results that suggest the Ethics Commissioner’s findings had little or no effect on the popular support for the federal Liberals.
 
Meanwhile, the Liberal-led Ethics Committee in Ottawa says we’ve heard enough. No need for the Commissioner to expand upon his report at an open committee hearing.
 
And then there is a prevailing media narrative that suggests there is no need to pursue the matter. We should cool out jets and wait for the outcome of the federal election on October 21st.
 
Seriously?

Elections aren’t supposed to be a punishment tool. They’re supposed to be the height of our democratic expression. And that democratic expression doesn’t end when I walk out of the polling booth. That X on the ballot is supposed to fuel our democracy between elections. That doesn’t mean the government of the day gets to break the law unscathed simply because it enjoys a majority of seats in the legislature.
 
So, what we’ve learned this week is there is a time and place when it’s acceptable to act unethically, to break the law without any accountability. And you’re okay with that.
 
As a footnote, it’s worth noting that for all of the PM’s effort to “save” SNC, this scandal has cost the company’s President and CEO his job, SNC’s stock has plunged and the company’s credit rating has been downgraded to junk status. That’s real-world accountability. No waiting.

Yes, Donald Trump has changed the game on racism and now he runs the table at will.

His latest “If-you’re-not-happy-here-you-can-leave” rant has an audience. “A lot of people love it” says the president. He’s not fussed by any controversy “because a lot of people agree with me.”(For what’s it’s worth, those who agree with him include white supremacists.)

In the past four years, Donald Trump has gone beyond normalizing racism. And America has been a complicit, passive, enabler.

There was a day when we laughed at Archie Bunker because we understood irony - or at least we thought we did. Here we are nearly half a century since Archie’s groundbreaking prime time television success and we’ve turned fiction into flat earth fact.

But that would never happen today. Archie would never get past the pitch meeting at the networks in 2019. All the “woke” apologists and politically correct who’ve become politically paralyzed, who bitch about the president’s idiotic ranting and unhinged behaviour couldn’t possibly abide a fictional overt racist, misogynistic, middle aged, foul-mouthed white character having any celebrity on television.
 
So, here we are in a world of breathless reporting that qualifies as journalism, a world of Twitter tirades that fuel Trump’s base that get little more than a slack-jawed response from a US Congress that is constipated by its partisanship.
 
We’re here because we have lost - perhaps forfeited - our collective ability to truly think independently, to understand or comprehend the nuanced lessons of irony.

We didn’t laugh at Archie Bunker because we agreed him. We laughed at him because we knew him to be a loathsome, ignorant asshole. We laughed at Archie because he was a racist. He was the butt of the joke.

Nobody’s laughing now, primarily because America is simply not brave enough to stand up to Donald Trump. And America certainly isn’t brave enough to say we need more Archie Bunker on prime time TV.

We’ve been watching the BBC series Mother, Father, Son – the story about media mogul Max Finch, played by Richard Gere. In one episode, Max determines that his son is not leadership material, he’ll never run the company. Why? Because his son makes the mistake of asking his father for feedback. “How did I do?” he asked after fielding questions at a news conference. 

It feeds the mistaken notion that leaders don’t need input, that they can’t learn something from someone else’s perspective, and, in Max’s case, asking for feedback is a mortal sin. It also speaks to the stereo-type of the type-A personality who insists on perfection over excellence and regards any request for feedback as a lack of virtue.

Of course, there are all kinds of examples of CEOs who would subscribe to Max’s vision to varying degrees and they have been wildly successful. But it doesn’t mean they’re right.

Most of us want to know that somebody’s at least paying attention to what we’re doing. At best, we get some insight into the things that make us successful. That feedback can come from our managers, our staff, our clients, our co-workers and even our competitors.

I’m no HR specialist. I only rely on the experience I’ve had over the past 35 years or so working in major market newsrooms in Canada. More often than not, I was called up to be a leader in those rooms. I was never afraid to ask for feedback. But looking back, I probably didn’t ask often enough and I most certainly didn’t provide it often enough.

Seeking out and providing feedback in the workplace could well be the least expensive, most effective form of professional development and one of the simplest of ways to increase employee engagement.

Do you get and give professional feedback? Does it make a difference? Then again, maybe I’m over thinking this. Wouldn’t be the first time !